Showing posts with label animation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label animation. Show all posts

Monday, January 01, 2024

Comic Arts Deaths in 2023 (final)

This will be updated as notices continue to come in. The list is an annual feature of the Comics Research Bibliography. Updates are marked with * - list finalized as of Jan 18, 2024.

 

Deaths in 2023 (with thanks to Bruce Guthrie’s Wikipedia mining, *Jamie Lang’s Cartoon Brew list, *John Freeman’s Down the Tubes list, *Wikipedia’s 2023 in Comics page, *DD Degg’s Daily Cartoonist list, *Didier Pasamonik’s ActuaBD list, and *Animation Magazine’s list) included editorial cartoonist Jim Adcock, Harmony Gold animation distributor Frank Agrama, Swedish animator Per Åhlin, Orang Utan Comics founding member Azim Akberali, Japanese manga artist Ryuzan Aki, *Dutch cartoonist Henk Alleman, Italian cartoonist Carlo Ambrosini, *animator Craig Armstrong, DC Comics librarian Allan Asherman, Belgian comic book artist Jo-El Azara (aka Joseph Loeckx), Spanish cartoonist Toni Batllori, Dave Comics (Brighton England) manager Stephen Bamford, Canadian animator Ted Bastien, Jack Bender, Golden Age comic collector Jon S. Berk, *animator Susan Bielenberg, tv animation syndicator Edward Bleier, Russian animator Natalya Bogomolova, *BC Boyer, *Disney animator David Braden, *animator Ernesto Brieno, Hero Initiative coordinator Kevin Brogan (of Covid), French comics writer Jean-Yves Brouard, Chris Browne, *animation checker and painter Susan Burke, *British comic artist John Burns, British experimental animator Paul Bush, political cartoonist Clay Butler, *French comic writer Thierry Cailleteau, Italian cartoonist Renato Calligaro, *French cartoonist Louis Cance, Doonesbury inker Don Carlton, Brazil’s Paulo Caruso, French BD artist Jean-Claude Cassini, Italian comic book artist Massimo Cavezzali, “Yarns of the Yellowstone” cartoonist Bill Chapman, *storyboard artist John “Rich” Chidlaw, *Duck Soup Produckions co-founder Roger Chouinard, TV’s first Lois Lane Phyllis Coates, *French cartoonist Thierry Courtin, animator and Disneyland designer Rolly Crump, India’s Amul girl’s creator Sylvester daCunha, *animator Sukhdev Dail, *Scottish comic writer Jim Dallas, *Dutch cartoonist Wim de Bie, Bob de Groot, Toonz Animation Studios cofounder Bill Dennis, Elizabeth Woodward’s “Column for Teens” header cartoonist Ellen Derby (nee Keefe), *Belgian editor-in-chief of Journal Titnin Henri Desclez (aka Hapic),*British animator Alan Dewhurst, alternative cartoonist Michael Dougan, Canadian voice actor Ross Douglas, semi-pro panel cartoonist John Dusko, *Swedish comic artist Lennart Elworth, *British animator Ian Emes, Spanish cartoonist Enrich (aka Enric de Manuel González), *animator Don Ernst, comic book artist Steve Erwin, Brian Ewing, New Yorker cover artist Ian Falconer, *French exhibition curator and member of the Quai des Bulles festival Alain Faure, Wally (Trog) Fawkes, Yugoslavian Bosnian gag cartoonist Hasan Fazlic, Charles A. Filius, comic book inker John Floyd, *Australian animation legend Cam Ford, *animation storyboard artist Gerry Fournier, British graphic novel writer Christopher Fowler, Disney animator Randy Fullmer, *Hungary’s Attila Futaki, Argentine comics artist Ernesto García Seijas, Raleigh Comic Book Expo organizer Russ Garwood, American cartoonist Paul Giambarba, 2000AD's Ian Gibson, Joe Giella, MCU visual effects producer Diana Giorgiutti, Earthworld Comics store owner JC Glindmyer, Uruguayan cartoonist Tabaré Gómez Laborde, Pluggers contributor Gregory Grabiak, Dan Green, The Ph.D. Culture Cartoon Book author Gary Grobman, Dærick Gröss Sr., Sam Gross, comic store owner / Marvel employee / Geppi consultant Gary Guzzo, King of the Hill voice actor Johnny Hardwick, *British underground comix publisher Lee Harris, disgraced Australian cartoonist Rolf Harris, John Hart Studio gag writer-colorist-letterer Perri Hart, *animation technical director Vahe Haytaian, comic strip and comic book cartoonist Frank Hill, comic book historian Roger Hill, Egyptian cartoonist Ibrahim Hunaiter, British political cartoonist Tony Husband, Spanish cartoonist Francisco Ibáñez Talavera, Japanese voice actor Shōzō Iizuka, David Illsley, *anime director Satoshi Iwataki, Luke Cage TV writer Nathan Louis Jackson, John Jakes, *animation writer Gregory Joackim, Creators Syndicate comics department manager Pete Kaminski, *Doc Savage comic book cover artist Roger Kastel, *British comics agent Pat Kelleher, Japanese animator Takahiro Kimura, *animation color designer William “Bike” Kinzle, *animator Tony Klück, Edward Koren, Disney and animation historian Jim Korkis, illustrator Sandy Kossin, stop-motion animator Pete Kozachik, artist and graphic designer Frank Kozik, *Tatsunoko Productions anime studio co-founder Ippei Kuri, Japanese voice actor Yasumichi Kushida, *Belgian comic artist Lagas, *Softimage founder Daniel Langlois, *animation storyboard and layout artist Lin Larsen, *Space Ace publisher and comics writer John Lawrence, "postmodern cartoon art expressionist" David “LEBO” Le Batard, gag cartoonist Bill Lee, ‘Mulan’ singer and Chinese voice actor Coco Lee, South Korean cartoonist Lee Woo-young, editorial cartoonist Jay Leeson, *French cartoonist Pierre Le Goff, French cartoonist Paul Leuquet, *animation technical director Nick Levenduski, Emily & Toby cartoonist Virginia Lindemann, original Wednesday Addams actress Lisa Loring, French BD author Malo Louarn, *animator Gerald “Jerry” Loveland, *animation production manager Anne Luiting, *British cartoonist and animator Ric Machin, *animation layout artist and character Istvan Majoros, syndicate comics editor Sharon Malheiro, *animator Walter P. Martishius, collector Harry Matetsky, British comic book company Beyond The Bunker founder and colorist Ivanna Matilla, anime producer Shunpei Maruyama, Leiji Matsumoto, Disney animator Burny Mattinson, Bruce McCall, Ian McGinty, *Disney animation historian Russell Merritt, Amanda Panda and Harvey Pekar artist Jack Millie, comic book artist Lee Moder, Harvard Lampoon cartoonist Bob Moncrieff, Italian comic artist Giuseppe Montanari, NCS administrator Latisha Moore, Pluggers writer Tom Moore, *animator Ken Mundie, *Coco’s Mexican voice actor Ana Ofelia Murguía, Hisaya Nakajo (aka Peco Fujiya and Ryou Fumizuki), Russian animator Vyacheslav Nazaruk, Indian cartoonist Ajit Ninan, Norwegian cartoonist Dina Norlund, Crash Bandicoot videogame voice actor Brendan O'Brien, collector and scholar Richard D. Olson, Italian comic book artist Graziano Origa, Ukrainian writer for TCJ Evheny Osievsk, Dutch cartoonist Richard Pakker, voice actor Jansen Panettiere, *Argentine comic artist Carlos Pedrazzini (aka Salomon Grundig), Scott Pellegrini, Sri Lankan cartoonist Camillus Perera, French cartoonist Jean-Louis Pesch, Australian cartoonist Bruce Petty, Italian comic artist Luigi Piccatto, Canadian political cartoonist Peter “Pic” Pickersgill, *animation writer Duane Earl Poole, underground cartoonist Joshua Quagmire (aka Richard Glen Lester II), *animator Dick Rauh, Paul Ramboux aka “Sidney”, MCU stuntman Taraja Ramsess, animation writer Michael Reaves, *animation voice actor Lance Reddick, *French-Canadian Hubert Reeves, *voice actor Paul Reubens aka Pee-wee Herman, *animation background designer Jeffrey Riche, *cel painter Filonella “Nellie” Rodriguez Bell, *animator Jessie Romero, Portfolio Entertainment’s co-founding partner and CEO Joy Rosen, Mexican artist José Luis Ruiz Pérez, Pittsburgh comic book shop owner Ron Russitano, animator William Ruzicka, *animator Lucinda Sanderson, 'Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto' manga creator Nami Sano, St. Louis Post-Dispatch cartoonist Al Schweitzer, Japanese voice actor Mitsuo Senda, *French comics artist Patrice Serrin, Belgian animator Raoul Servais, Gerry Shamray, Robotman creator Peter Shelley, Kentucky comic store owner Rickey Sheppard, *Brazilian comic book colorist PC Siqueira, comic book writer Steve Skeates, Dutch comic store owner Han Slotema, colorist Jasen Smith, Fox Television Animation storyboard cleanup artist Jeff Scott Smith, Harley Quinn inspiration and voice actor (and Tiny Toon Adventures writer) Arleen Sorkin, American voice actor Peter Spellos, art dealer Allen Spiegel, Italian cartoonist Sergio Staino, *animator Allen Stovall, *Strahle’s Baliwick comic panel cartoonist Jim Strahle, former college editorial cartoonist Robert Stringer, Indian cartoonist Sukumar, African-American animator Leo D. Sullivan, Beano “Bash Street Kids” artist David Sutherland, Canadian animation supporter Hélène Tanguay, Italian artist Saverio Tenuta, Buichi Terasawa, *Italian writer Antonio Tettamanti, Toei President Osamu Tezuka, direct market pioneer Mel Thompson, British comic strip cartoonist Bill Tidy, St. Petersburg Times editorial cartoonist Joe Tonelli, Japanese manga artist Yoshiko Tsuchida, French BD writer Eddy Vaccaro, comics historian and art dealer Jim Vadeboncoeur Jr., *Dutch cartoonist Rupert van der Linden, *Netherlands-based Academy Award-winning animation producer Cilia van Dijk, *French publisher of Marvel Claude Vistel, ‘Lois & Clark’ writer and producer Jeff Vlaming, Mike Voiles of Mike's Amazing World of Comics website, Egyptian cartoonist Ragai Wanis, voice actor Jimmy Weldon, *Dutch cartoonist Harr Wiegman, MECCAcon founder Maia Crown Williams, Doug Wright Awards patron Phyllis Wright Thomas, Studio Ghibli art director Nizo Yamamoto, editorial cartoonist John “Yardley” Yardley-Jones, *Swedish cartoonist Leif Zetterling.


Monday, October 31, 2022

Quick Reviews: Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo!


By Claire Rhode

Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo! (2022) is a love letter to the franchise, but Warner Bros isn't Shakespeare. The premise of the film is that every case from the original series had one mastermind behind the costume villains -- Coco Diablo. Coco is suave, knows her way around a wardrobe, and has a cat for a personal assistant (an opportunity, as always, for Scooby Doo to hate cats. Rude boy). However, when Mystery Inc. tracks down Coco, they create a whole new problem: without good costumed creeps, there are no new monsters to chase. At least, there are no new monsters until the gang's ancient doppelgangers show up to wreck havoc on Halloween, which means that the gang has to team up with an unexpected ally. 

 Not the sort of doppelganger you want to run into in a dark alley

This movie isn't deep, but it is a fun romp that managed to give each member of the gang their own subplot, which is rare in a Scooby-Doo movie. Velma's reveal is well-known -- if you saw the clips of her swooning over Coco Diablo, you're not alone. And, honestly, I respect Velma's taste. Daphne is questioning her place in the gang. Fred doesn't know how to live in a world without weirdos dressing up in costumes trying to commit land related crimes. And Shaggy and Scooby? Well, theirs is food focused, of course. 

Some pros include:

  • Fun music! Wouldn't be a Scooby-Doo chase scene without it.
  • A morally grey character. Weird, but Scooby-Doo rarely goes there.
  • Refined versions of the characters we started to see in the earlier Mystery Incorporated series. Each member of the gang gets a bit more personality than we saw in the original series, but they are definitely reliant on fans already recognizing aspects of the characters from Mystery Incorporated specifically - so they've brought in Fred's himbo energy (but toned him down a bit so he isn't too stupid to live), given Daphne agency, explored Velma's sexuality without having to include a character named Hot Dog Water, and actually differentiated a bit between Shaggy and Scooby's personalities. 

Hot Dog Water, for the uninitiated

  • Pulls off a twist ending. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to solve a Doo mystery, but I do like when they at least try to throw you for a loop.

 Some cons:

  • Scooby-Doo supports the prison-industrial complex.
  • The animation, a return to an almost traditional 2D style, occasionally veers into uncanny valley, especially with some facial expressions.
  • Mostly I liked it, but there is a little part of my heart that gets grumpy when they retcon or change things about earlier series.
  • The shushing librarian stereotype. We've moved past it. Our librarian training is firmly anti-shushing. That said, I do love that a scene happened in a library!

I consider myself a Scooby-Doo aficionado. I've been watching since I was a kid. I've seen the rough ones. I've sat through Scrappy-Doo episodes on purpose. Trick or Treat won't be going down on my list of favorites, but I've seen it twice now and I can imagine rewatching again next Halloween season. It's delightful, lighthearted, and includes a lot of Easter eggs and small callbacks for fans of the franchise. Overall, I give Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo! four out of five stars. 

 Claire Rhode, a former children's bookseller, is now studying to be a youth librarian.

Wednesday, October 12, 2022

The Occasionally Fabulous Cartooning Life of Eric Orner, part 1: Ethan Green and Disney

by Mike Rhode

Eric Orner has been a professional cartoonist for decades, and worked his way through many types of cartooning. Early in the summer of 2022, as COVID restrictions started lifting, he read from his new book Smahtguy: The Life and Times of Barney Frank at Solid State Books, to an audience that included many of his former colleagues from Frank's Congressional office. It's one of my favorite graphic books of 2022, which I was not expecting when I casually decided to go see the author of the Ethan Green comic strip that used to run in a newspaper in DC.

What are the odds that a disheveled, zaftig, closeted kid with the thickest of Jersey accents might wind up running Boston on behalf of a storied Irish Catholic political machine, drafting the nation’s first gay rights laws, reforming Wall Street after the Great Recession, and finding love, after a lifetime assuming that he couldn't and wouldn’t?In Smahtguy: The Life and Times of Barney Frank, one of America’s first out members of Congress and a gay and civil rights crusader for an era is confirmed as a hero of our age. But more than a biography of an indispensable LGBTQ pioneer, this funny, beautifully rendered, warts-and-all graphic account reveals the down-and-dirty inner workings of Boston and DC politics. As Frank’s longtime staff counsel and press secretary, Eric Orner lends his first-hand perspective to this extraordinary work of history, paying tribute to the mighty striving of committed liberals to defend ordinary Americans from an assault on their shared society. (from the publisher's description)

MR: What type of comic work or cartooning do you do? I know you've done at least two and maybe three different times of cartooning in your career. 

EO:  I’m a comic strip artist, who also does graphic novels, animation, and illustration. My artistic roots are really with the alternative weekly newspaper cartooning that existed and really proliferated when I was a kid in seventies and eighties and lasted into the nineties.  Cartoonists like Jules Feiffer, Linda Berry, Mimi Pond. Opinionated, funny, subversive cartooning that often appeared in weekly newspapers inspired me to crate my own cartoons. My art may have developed over the years, but that sensibility hasn’t. Whether it's animation or drawing a graphic novel, there's a through line in terms of sensibility; My work is always going to be little subversive, political and, hopefully, funny. 

MR: Your major comic strip was The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green, which used to run in the Washington Blade. Can you talk a little bit about that? How you started it, how long it ran, how many papers you got it in? 

EO: Ethan Green published in about 100 newspapers. about 75% of them, were LGBTQ newspapers. The rest were Alt Weeklies—opinionated weekly newspapers, mostly in college towns and the occasional big city paper, like the Boston Phoenix

The Ethan Green family of characters

 

The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green  was collected in four books from St. Martin's Press, and an omnibus from Northwest Press. In 2005, the strip was adapted as an indie feature film, (also titled The MostlyUnfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green) that got a decent—17 city—release at the time. 

 MR: So obviously it was a strip about Ethan Green, but can you give our younger readers a little bit of background about it? 

EO:  When I was coming out in my mid-twenties, there was no comic strip—and not that much storytelling in popular media period about “average” gay folks and their social lives. What gay storytelling in comics there was seemed over the top and stereotypical to me: oversexed Tom of Finland, hyper-sexualized depictions, or fey, campy queens such as Liberace or Uncle Arthur on Bewitched. There were comic books. There was a series called Gay Comix and then another one called Meatmen, and those were the two. That's what we saw about gay men in comics; . I thought it was reductive. I wanted to write something that was funny but accessible. I wanted it to be about an average gay guy.

About a guy that looked like he had a job, and friends he went out with, and a next door neighbor (played by Shanola Hampton in the Ethan movie, by the way) who’s couch you wouldn’t mind taking refuge on, after some jerk dumped you. I wanted readers to recognize themselves in Ethan Green, and to enjoy an intimacy akin to a friend telling you over coffee all dreadful things that he or she was experienced in dating, in going to clubs, in hooking up, in experiencing all the painful, but funny, misfires of a person's social life.

There were models for that in the straight comics world, like the comic strips, Cathy, or Sylvia, Nicole Hollander’s feminist strip about being a divorced woman. And on TV: almost every episode of Mary Tyler Moore, or Frasier, or Seinfeld. Some love interest who for whatever reason, was fatally flawed in a pretty funny way. But despite the romantic failures, the lives of these characters were full. That was a formula for Ethan. 

All through college, I did political cartoons for the Boston Globe and Boston Phoenix. Even sports cartoons for the Boston Herald. After graduating I landed a full-time job with the daily newspaper in Concord New Hampshire, the Concord Monitor—an association I remain really proud of. I met some of the country’s best future journalists working at the farm team that was the Monitor. As much as I loved the paper though, and doing a daily editorial cartoon, being a gay guy in New Hampshire during the AIDS crisis wasn’t safe or welcoming... So I quit, and I moved to Boston. As a consolation prize, I drew what I was seeing –and hearing—mostly at gay bars—while I was out there trying to make friends and, and find romance. These cartoons were just little things that I drew to amuse myself. At some point though, I showed them to an editor of Bay Windows, an LGBTQ weekly in Boston and he bought them all. Soon these cartoons were picked up by other gay press outlets across the country. 

A Boston Herald cartoon featuring a sleazy 1980s version of Donald Trump, who had just purchased the USFL  

 
MR: Returning to the movie, 99% of these types of movies that get optioned never get made, but yours got made. Did you have anything you wanted to say about the process?

 EO:   I didn't know anything about movies, when I was contacted by this couple of young filmmakers, but I was impressed that they’d worked on Men in Black, so I agreed to meet with them and one thing led to another. Later I moved to Hollywood, worked in animation and learned more about the film business but this happened just before that. Bottom line is, I'm very proud that The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green movie got made, because like you say, most stories that get optioned then just sit on a shelf, “in development” forever. So, I’m pretty grateful for having had the experience being at a movie premier where my own characters were up there on the big screen, especially with Meredith Baxter playing Ethan's mom. However, If I ever have the opportunity again, I know to apply a little bit more rigor in terms of the screenplay. The movie’s flaw was it attempted to be too true to a comic strip which ran over 15 years. They threw everything but the kitchen sink into a plot that wound up sort of all over the place.  I was honored by the fact that they attempted to shoehorn in all these little details from so many Ethan episodes—it’s pretty seductive to see actual panels you’ve drawn come to life—but what I should have said to them is, “Look, you should pick one story-line and stick to it. This strip is 15 years long. There's lots of specific story-lines and you just need to stick to one strand.” The movie has funny parts, but it was panned for being sprawling and messy.

MR: The comic strip ran over 15 years. Did you keep working off your life for that entire time, or did he start to just become a more independent type fictional character? 

EO: The sensibility was mine, but the main character wasn't really me. He was often single, with a series of boyfriends who never worked out.  I had a husband throughout the strip’s 15-year run. sometimes fans of the strip would learn that and feel a little bit misled, because there was an assumption that it was autobiographical. I think a lot of fiction works like this. People make the assumption that you're the main character, but your voice could be coming out of the cat, or the grandmother. There's no law that says, “I have to apply my thoughts to the character that looks most like me. Though admittedly, there were parallels. He was a youngish gay guy with a vaguely Jewish background. He worked for somebody famous. In Ethan’s case a notoriously bad-at-forecasting TV weatherman.  I had a day job working for someone famous, a Congressman. Ethan Green published during some of the toughest years of AIDS-HIV -- the darkness before the dawn of the “drug cocktail” that showed up in 1996. A lot of the story-lines were thing I was reporting on and living amidst, if not experiencing personally. Ethan, who was presumably negative because I never identified him as positive, had a positive boyfriend for example, where my husband and I had the same, not differing, HIV status. 


 

Some of the situational gags in Ethan happened to me in real life:  Like leaving a bar and going home with someone who, you quickly realized wasn’t actually someone you wanted to spend the rest of the evening with. Stuff like that often strikes me as funny, though also sorta awful, even as it happening in real time This one Ethan episode called “Your Sordid Love Life, Revisited” was based on something that had happened to me years before: I had gone home with some guy who  happened to live in Kenmore Square, where Fenway Park is. I left some club with him, got to his apartment and realized that for whatever reason, I wanted out immediately. Boston is a big city, but it shuts down at night. It was three o'clock in the morning, and he was yelling at me out a window as I emerged out onto the street from his building and then went to look for my car. He’s hurling curses—FRIGGIN' PRICK TEASE!—that are bouncing off the pavement. You could’ve heard him in the Berkshires.

MR: That advice, “write what you know,” is not necessarily the greatest advice, but if you're going to do a 15-year-long comic strip, there's definitely going to be some of that necessary.

EO:  I agree. though I think that advice applies more fully to my current book, Smahtguy. “Write what you know” depends on what you actually know. I have a lot of friends who are academics and so they write about college English departments. There have been a few good books like that, but being a bus driver, you might learn something more interesting. In terms of storytelling, it was never my choice to have a pretty rigorous day job in politics, but day jobs generate material and creativity, if you have enough energy to write before or after work.  Simply being out there at work every day and rubbing elbows with colleagues in a work setting for years on  Capitol Hill, has its advantages when it comes experiencing something you later choose to write about.   

MR: Let me ask how you came to work for Disney, what you were doing for Disney and any thoughts you might have about animation?

EO:  I've had this weird bifurcated professional life where all I ever wanted to be was a cartoonist. But I needed to make a living. Sometimes I was doing pretty well. The early years of Ethan, I was making a good living for a 22-year-old kid. Now I would be like, “Oh God, how am I gonna pay for my life?” But then it was, “Hey, this is pretty good.” I had different stints of working these political jobs. I never wanted to practice law, but if you're going to work political jobs as a policy staffer, having a law degree helps. So I went to law school all while I was drawing Ethan. I juggled two different lives at the same time.

In 2000, though, I decided I wanted to  try to make a living drawing exclusively. Newspapers were dying. Animation beckoned me. I love to draw and animation is drawing come to life. So I quit my day job and moved to Los Angeles and enrolled in UCLA film school where they've got a great animation program.  I learned to animate and it was pretty cool. I got offered a job as a very junior sort of story-boarding assistant at Disney. And I took it. Actually, it was offered to me because the producer liked Ethan Green and was willing to give me a shot. I learned was all kinds of technical skills that I use all the time like digital skills, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, that kind of thing, but also like real drawing skills. Things like drawing from life not photographs, the rules of perspective, capturing movement and gesture. But I also learned that I I didn’t much care for about Disney-style storytelling. I wound up working on the Tinkerbell movies and the joke I began telling was I learned the only kind of fairies I like drawing are the ones wearing leather chaps. You make a lot of mistakes in an artistic life because you’re just feeling your way. It's not like there's a book out there, “how to be a successful cartoonist or animation storyboard artist. I guess there are…

MR: …but they worked for one person, or they didn't even work for that person, but they felt like they wanted to write the book. Yeah, I get it.

EO:  I've always thought my artistic career was one-step forward, maybe three-quarter step back. It was a step forward to get a movie made. It was a three-quarter step back to not more rigorously keep control of the story-line because in the end it was my characters out there with my names and I'm a good storyteller, so I should have. In animation it made sense to learn animation and to be part of that world; it probably didn't make sense to pursue a job at Disney. I should have tried for Adult Swim. I just didn't have an in at Adult Swim. You take the in that you have, and mine was at Disney with a producer who knew my comic strip work. So you try and take these experiences and make something out of them, even if they aren’t the ultimate in terms of what you're looking for.  

 MR: Well, the fact that you've been able to make artwork for this period of time and at least make a partial living for it puts you above probably 90% of other people who may have thought they wanted to be a cartoonist. And probably you're still doing better than 95% [of those who worked in the field]. 

EO:  I guess that’s true. I’ve managed by hook or by crook, to keep creating and that gives me some satisfaction. Certainly, there's a lot of unrealized hopes, but I haven't given up. So there's that I guess. The fact is I probably would've stuck with animation, but then the recession hit 12 years ago, and what happened then in terms of my trajectory, is two things. I needed a job and there were none to be had, except under Barney who has always been loyal to me and didn't object to all my artistic ambitions, as long as I did a good job for him. So the only avenue available to me during the great recession was to go back to, what I sort of call the family business, because I grew up in this political household. I had these sort of innate political skills that I learned by osmosis growing up. But the other thing it was coupled with is one that’s very practical. “I need to make a living and this is something I know how to do.” Just like if you wanted to be an actor, but your brother's got a house painting business, and there are no acting jobs coming. So you go paint the house. That's how I looked at it, except for one other creative point or aspect that I couldn't ignore.

The truth is, in animation, I didn't really like drawing other people's stuff. Yes, I was making a living, but I was drawing Bambi 2, you know? I was just sort of a grunt artist. I had to admit to myself that really wasn't my dream. My dream is to create my own stories. And so this consolation prize for having a non-drawing day job was this, “At least when you're drawing, you're drawing your own stuff.” When you work in animation, unless you’re directing, there is no time to draw your own stuff. You're under a lot of pressure and the idea of coming home and then working on your stuff becomes undoable.

I know many incredibly talented artists in animation, but they don't publish and it's like only one in 500 show that are pitched actually get made. So their artistic or creative ambitions are often unrealized, even though they're making good livings and they're working on amazing projects, but there aren't those projects aren't their own. I can live with that, what I gave up. I don't think I would've done it on my own, had the recession not hit and I continued to have to be story boarding out there. I probably would've kept at it, but being able to publish your own stuff leads you to want to continue to create your own stuff. Also there's no reason to feel limited. That said,  I'd love to create an animated series—and I do think that show-runners and directors are often less like talented journeymen artists and more like people who create their own work. I might be wrong, but that's having seen it from both sides, that’s where I’ve landed. I just want the chance to continue to tell my own stories and hopefully entertain people with my own stuff. 

To be continued with the story of Smahtguy...

 

Friday, April 22, 2022

The Post reviews The Bad Guys, and explains Florida vs Disney (as much as possible)

'The Bad Guys' is a good movie: A heist flick with humor and heart [in print as Imagine 'Ocean's 11' with animals, and you get this fun heist flick]

The animated comedy about talking animals who try to give up the criminal lifestyle is like a family-friendly 'Ocean's 11'

Friday, March 11, 2022

The Post on animation - Pixar’s ‘Turning Red’ and ‘I Am Here’

Pixar's 'Turning Red' is a brilliant, hilarious follow-up to Oscar-winning short 'Bao' [in print as Nothing fuzzy about coming-of-age flick]

Domee Shi's semi-autobiographical first feature film is audacious, funny and sweet.

(4 stars)

Documentary tells a Holocaust-survival story in simple animation

'I Am Here' is a bearing of witness, by 98-year-old Ella Blumenthal [South Africa]

(2 stars)
 

What to watch with your kids: ‘The Adam Project’, ‘Turning Red’ and more [Big Nate; animation]

Washington Post March 11, 2022  p. Weekend 21

online at https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/movies/what-to-watch-with-your-kids-the-adam-project-turning-red-and-more/2022/03/09/7c5e7252-9b3b-11ec-adfd-da5e159009e0_story.html